Celebrate
by PandaFire McMango
Summary: We know it's ending. It's ending on stage. But what about us? Are we ending? THE HELL WE ARE! My RENT rant. And it's nice to be back.


I have no doubt that there will be many of these—outpourings of love and emotion and pain, everyone having their own personal catharsis. I have no doubt that RENT, even as it leaves the stage, will see one of the largest shows of love it has ever known. I have no doubt…

Because even if I don't know you…if I've never met you, never talked to you, never read your work, even if I don't know you exist, I still love you.

I love you all, RENTheads, because in a world where everything shifts and changes and leaves us behind or shoves us forward when we are not ready, we are a family. A family of people who are related not by blood, but by understanding. Understanding that RENT, unlike so much in our lives, will stay with us, as it has for so many years.

I have read and listened to the words of so many wise people, all of whom say that it doesn't matter how many times you've seen it on stage or when you first found out about it or how many lyrics you know—none of it matter, because the love counts. They're all right, beyond anything that anyone can really say. Love is like RENT: it can undergo external changes and maybe sometimes it can make you hurt or cry, but no matter what, it does not change in the core. Love made RENT what it is, and it makes us what we are.

On June 1, we will bid farewell to that world; the world where no matter what, no matter how badly you felt or how wonderful life was, RENT was always there, steady and present in the background. The Nederlander, our home and the birth of what we hold so dear, will be changed. Life will be changed, by however great or small a margin it is to you, it will still change. And can I just say…

CHANGE SUCKS.

But we know that, and despite it we have lives to lead.

Mimi and Roger and Collins and Angel and Mark and Benny and Maureen and Joanne are no less real to us than they were in 1996. I love them all dearly, and I know inside that can't change. And the music is real, and the story is real, and the message is real. And Jonathan, though he may be gone, is real.

It's still real.

When I came home and found out, I cried for literally over an hour. I watched my OBC tapes and all I could think was, "All of you…everything you've done will end. Everything you've started will be done now, and we can't save it." All I could see was the end.

But I wasn't smart enough to see my own beginning.

Ten years from now, someone will fall in love with this show and cry themselves to sleep because they missed it; they missed it onstage, they missed the movie, they missed the OBC, they missed it all. But us—no matter when you fell in love with RENT, no matter how you fell in love, remember this:

YOU DID NOT MISS IT.

You were part of this family, and you still are. And that person, ten years in the future, is part of the family too, and we all of us will miss this show just as much as they do. It's part of me, and like so many it has saved me and taught me and shown me more than I could ever have found on my own. I know that all of you have your own stories to share, and I know you have all lost something. Loss is the worst feeling in the world, no matter how you look at it, and we're losing something now.

But we don't have to lose each other. And we do not have to lose the music, or the people, or the story, or the message, or the jokes, or the dance numbers, or the lyrics, or the actors, or any of it. Because (and I know this is beyond cheesy, but I think Jonathan would approve) THE STORY NEVER ENDS.

God, it really never ends, does it?

We never end. RENT never ends.

And on June 1, whether we're at the Nederlander or in Cambridge, Massachusetts or Seattle or Chicago or Arkansas or Newport or London or Budapest or the goddamn moon, we will say goodbye to someone we love.

But we can never, will never, and must never forget them.

I love you all. Celebrate and remember the years in the lives of friends.

And even if today hurts like a bitch, it's the only one there is.

Your loving fellow RENThead, Esther The Panda

Forget regret, or life is _ours to miss._


End file.
